The newspaper subsidiaries of the Big Media Monopoly’s media conglomerates are no longer as super-profitable as they were before they had to compete for younger readers with non-profit bloggers and alternative journalists on the Internet; and before the current U.S. economic depression led to a decline in their super-profits from the sale of corporate advertising space. So, predictably, some of the lobbyists for the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s media conglomerates have apparently been starting to lobby recently for some more tax breaks and public bail-out funds from local, state and federal government institutions for the Big Media Monopoly’s newspapers. But it’s not likely that the now-deceased prominent 20th-century African-American intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, would have wanted the tax money collected from U.S. working-class people to be used to bail-out the Big Media Monopoly’s newspaper industry. As early as 1955, for example, DuBois characterized the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s daily newspapers in the following way:
“Truth makes us free and lack of it enslaves us. Yet we have become accustomed to expect to have truth furnished us daily…at the hands of makers of clothes, cigarettes and toothpaste, who pay its main costs. “When we slowly awake to the fact that much of the real news never reaches us, much is deliberately misinterpreted, we contemplate gathering our own news…”
DuBois had also asserted on July 29, 1953 that “the average New York Sunday paper is a vast bundle of pounds of advertisements enmeshed in a mass of propaganda and wrapped in a rag bag of entertainment, distraction and escapism…all calculated to make upon the reader the impression which the owners of this vast economic organization want made on the people of the U.S. and the world…”
In his introduction to the 1974 book Big Brother and The Holding Company: The World Behind Watergate, Noam Chomsky asserted that “Richard Nixon is one of the major criminals of the 20th century, and the same is true of those who have designed and implemented the foreign policy of his administration;” and “it is plain that Nixon’s pleasant crew succeeded in stealing the 1972 election.” In an essay, titled ‘Nixon and the Miami Connection”, which appeared in the same book, 1990s New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth also wrote that “from his smear campaigns in the late 1940s, to the secret slush fund that led to the Checkers speech in 1952, to the Hughes loan in 1960, to the $400,000 ITT scandal in 1972 to the Watergate break-in and the secret Republican war chest, Nixon’s ascendancy to power has been surrounded by the stigma of suspicion.” Another essay in Big Brother and The Holding Company also described the now-deceased Nixon’s 1960s and 1970s connection to New York University’s board of trustees:
“Until 1963, Mudge, Stern, Baldwin & Todd was a stodgy old Wall Street law firm…One of its oldest clients was Warner-Lambert Pharmaceuticals, whose chairman, vitamin king Elmer Bobst, had a personal stake in finding a job for his old friend Richard Nixon… “…Bobst…convinced the partners of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin & Todd that Nixon’s presence would bring in new clients… “Nixon joined the firm in mid-1963 and on January 1, 1964, the name became Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander… “Salmon Brothers has a pragmatic and self-serving interest in New York University. They made a `gift’ of $3 million to an education and research center relating to financial organizations…Other Mudge, Rose clients have an interest in New York University. Former chairman of Irving Trust, George A. Murphy is a trustee. Elmer Bobst, of Warner-Lambert, is not only a trustee, but also gave $11 million to New York University’s newly dedicated Elmer H. Bobst Library…”
The FBI apparently had a long history of being involved in the actions of U.S. right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan. As the 1992 book Spying On America: The FBI’s Counter-intelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis revealed, by the end of 1965 the FBI “had more than 7,000 undercover informants in place and operating within the klaverns” and “undercover informants were used in 85 percent of Klan actions.” The same book also noted that “about 15 percent of the entire KKK” was composed of FBI “informants” and “about half” of the FBI informants “were elected to leadership positions” within the KKK in the 1960s. (Downtown 7/19/95) Following the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, the Democratic Clinton Administration announced that it would hire yet another 1,000 FBI agents to “counter terrorism.” Yet as The True Story Of The Greensboro Massacre by Paul Bermanzohn and Sally Bermanzohn observed in 1980:
“The U.S. government has been using the Klan and other fascist groups for a long time. As far back as 1959 the FBI inserted Gary Rowe into the Alabama KKK. In the course of a 15-year terrorist career he instigated `many dozens’ of violent attacks, including a bloody assault on Birmingham freedom fighters in 1962, the church bombing murder of four schoolgirls and the murder of Viola Liuzzo. During the late 1960s, the FBI set up `more than 40’ all-informant Klan chapters in North Carolina alone.”
An FBI informant, Bill Wilkinson, apparently also set up the KKK’s Invisible Empire organization in 1980. As Blood In The Face by James Ridgeway recalled in 1990:
“In 1975 (David) Duke formed his own Knights of the Ku Klux Klan…
“In 1980, Duke ally, Bill Wilkinson, left the Knights to set up his own competing Invisible Empire…Wilkinson was able to persuade Duke to…sell the membership list of the Knights of the KKK for $35,000. Wilkinson secretly videotaped Duke making the deal. He then threatened to play the videotape for a Klan membership meeting. Soon thereafter, Duke quit the Klan…Klansmen later discovered that Wizard Wilkinson himself had been an FBI informer since 1974…”
Blood In The Face also pointed out that “an FBI informant was among the Klansmen who organized the 1961 attack on the Freedom Riders” during the Civil Rights Era, but “the FBI did nothing to stop the attack, and its silent complicity was not revealed until 14 years later.” (Downtown 5/17/95) In the early 1970s, the FBI apparently also ordered one of its undercover agents to set up a terrorist bombing in Seattle. As Spying On America: The FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis also noted in 1992:
“David Sannes, a special agent, served as the undercover liaison…in the Seattle area. He later testified that he was instructed by bureau counter-intelligence officials to develop a terrorist bombing operation, and to develop the explosives in such a way that they would misfire and kill those who were doing the bombings. In May 1972, after he had left the bureau, Sannes said that he had `decided to make what I had done public so that the people of the United States could be informed of what was going on.’”
The Klan arrived The cops moved aside The sharpshooters aimed their guns The FBI laughed The Nazis attacked And shed five workers’ blood. Five fighters for freedom now lay dead Slain in Greensboro, their deaths will be avenged.
Jim Waller Was a doctor Who always served the poor And he also saw That mill workers Needed to wage class war. He led a strike and workers chose him head But those who owned the factories wished him dead.
And brave Cesar Was a fighter Inside Duke Hospital He fought the Klan With his bare hands Until they mowed him down. He saw that those who work are still enslaved And for his thoughts, they sent him to an early grave.
And Mike Nathan Carried no gun Yet still helped Africa He did not run But helped the wounded Till shot from the Klan car. On his deathbed, the Party honored him But those who sent his killers, they still grin.
And Bill Sampson Did not give in And fired in self-defense And as he died He said “keep on firing” As the bullets took effect. He also led a union at his plant And was not afraid to be a communist.
And Sandy Smith She knew racists All wished to see her dead She saved children Then took a gun To make sure the Nazis fled. They shot her down like many women before The government killed her, `cause she was a fighter. To listen to "The Greensboro Massacre" protest folk song, you can click on the following music site link: http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Protest+Folk+Songs/The+Greensboro+Massacre “The Greensboro Massacre” protest folk song was written nearly 30 years ago, shortly after five anti-racist left activists were murdered on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina. According to The True Story Of The Greensboro Massacre by Paul and Sally Bermanzohn:
“The U.S. Treasury Department Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [BATF] had sent agent Bernard Butkovich to North Carolina to join the Nazis and oversee the assassination. On Nov. 3 [1979] he brought the list of who was to be shot and helped the killers escape. The caravan of Klan and Nazis were recruited and organized by Klansmen and FBI provocateur Edward Dawson. Dawson worked in league with the Greensboro Police Department. While Dawson led the caravan into our demonstration, Greensboro Police Detective Jerry Cooper followed them, deliberately delaying the arrival of any other cops.”
On Nov. 17, 1980 the Southern jury found the six Klansmen and Nazis indicted for murder, as a result of their apparent involvement in the Greensboro Massacre, to be “not guilty.” Coincidentally, African-Americans had not been allowed to serve on the jury. (Downtown 11/9/94) To listen to some other protest folk songs, you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” music site at the following link:
(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)
By the time the Newhouse family somehow found the capital to purchase more newspapers in Syracuse, Jersey City and Harrisburg in the 1940s and in St. Louis, Oregon and Alabama in the 1950s, some people began to wonder how the Newhouse family obtained so much money. And by the time the Newhouse family—whose wealth approached $200 million [in 1950’s money] in the late 1950s—laid down its cash to gobble up Vogue and the other Conde’ Nast magazines, more suspicions about the Newhouse family’s source of wealth had developed. As the book Newspaperman by Richard Meeker recalled:
“Newspaper analysts were so suspicious of the source of Newhouse’s funds that they discussed openly the possibility that he was laundering money…Some went so far as to suggest that his newspaper operations had been used as a front for the notorious Reinfeld mob, a group of booze-peddling hoodlums, whose boss had made millions during prohibition.”
One way the Newhouse family apparently was able to accumulate so much money so rapidly during the 20th Century was by hiring accountants and lawyers who figured out unique ways for the Newhouse Dynasty to avoid paying a fair share of taxes on their rapidly growing family wealth. As Newspaperman reported:
“`They played every tax game there was,’ recalled one man who once served as publisher for several Newhouse newspapers. That meant that every cost that could conceivably be written off as a business deduction was, that assets were depreciated as rapidly as possible, ant that new acquisitions were `written up’ as high as the law allowed…Where Newhouse developed a special advantage was in the way he avoided paying taxes for the profits that remained to him after the payment of corporate taxes…
“Thanks to an ingenious device created by his accountant, Louis Glickman, and implemented by his attorney, Charles Goldman, Newhouse was able to avoid paying taxes on accumulated earnings and, thus, to multiply the value of his earnings several times. Doing so involved the creation of a special corporate structure for the various newspapers…Because the Goldman-Glickman construct kept the various enterprises separate—for tax purposes at least—each could claim the right to its own surplus. Taken together, the accumulation that resulted was many times what the IRS would have allowed had Newhouse simply treated all of his operations as a single corporation.”
The same book also characterized the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation as “a charity his [Samuel I. Newhouse I’s] lawyers had created as an additional tax dodge” and charged that Newhouse Foundation funds were used by the Newhouse family to finance its $18 million purchase of Alabama’s Birmingham News in 1955. After Samuel Newhouse I died in 1979, his two sons, S.I. Newhouse, Jr. and Donald Newhouse, were accused of tax evasion by the IRS during the 1980s. Six months after their father’s death, S.I. Newhouse, Jr. and Donald Newhouse valued his estate at $181.9 million and filed a tax return which claimed they owed $48.7 million in inheritance taxes. In 1983, however, the IRS informed the Newhouse brothers that their father’s estate “was worth an estimated $1.2 billion, and thus the tax as computed was deficient by more than $609 million” and “the government tacked on a 50 percent penalty ($304 million and change) for civil fraud,” according to the March 13, 1989 issue of The Nation magazine. Although the IRS dropped its tax fraud charge against the Newhouse Dynasty later in the 1980s, it increased its tax delinquency bill for the Newhouse family to $1.2 billion, since it claimed the Newhouse estate was actually worth $2.2 billion—not $1.2 billion—when Samuel Newhouse I died in 1979, according to The Nation. The U.S. court system was apparently not too eager, however, to rule against the Newhouse Dynasty and the “Newhouse Tax Evasion Case” ended with a favorable “not guilty” verdict for the Newhouse brothers. Besides owning Parade and his other Big Media publishing properties, in the 1990s S.I. Newhouse, Jr. also owned a big collection of post-World War II paintings; and in the late 1980s, he spent $17 million to purchase modern artist Jasper Johns’ “False Start”. Coincidentally, the owner of Jasper Johns’ modern work of art also sat on Midtown Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art’s board of trustees in the early 1990s. (end of article)
(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)
Ever since Samuel Newhouse I started working as an office-boy, bookkeeper and rent-collector in Jersey Democratic machine politician, Bayonne Times owner and Judge Hyman Lazarus’s law office in 1908, the Newhouse family has shown a remarkable ability to accumulate more money, more swiftly, than most families who get involved in the U.S. media world. By the time Samuel Newhouse I was 21 in 1916, he was earning around $30,000 per year and had been given 25 percent ownership of the Bayonne Times by his boss, Judge Lazarus, for his loyal service. By 1922, Newhouse had saved up enough money to purchase the Staten Island Advance in partnership with Judge Lazarus. And a few years later, when his original partner, Judge Lazarus, died in 1924, Newhouse also had enough money to buy up the Lazarus family’s share of Staten Island Advance stock. During the 1920s, the Newhouse family also had enough money to loan the money to Henry Grafinkle which enabled him to open newsstands that were quite good at selling the Newhouse family’s Staten Island Advance at the St. George’s Ferry Terminal on Staten Island, as well as to open newsstands throughout Manhattan, at LaGuardia Airport, at Newark Airport and at the Port Authority Bus Terminal (the world’s largest and most lucrative newsstand)—which also sold other Newhouse publications quite well throughout the years. During the 1930s Depression, the Newhouse family still had enough money to buy the Long Island Press in Jamaica and the previously competing Long Island Star, North Shore Journal and Nassau Journal, as well as the Newark Ledger, the Newark Star and newspapers in Syracuse. At the Long Island Press during the 1930s—where the Newhouse family was paying its non-unionized newsroom employees only 33 percent of what unionized New York Times and New York Daily News employees were earning for similar work—Samuel Newhouse I’s salary was more than the total of all the salaries paid to the Newhouse family’s 65 newsroom employees there. (end of part 1)
(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)
In the 1990s, the sons of Samuel Newhouse I continued to hold a lot of U.S. Big Media power. As the Magazine In America: 1741-1990 book by John Tebbel and Mary Zuckerman then observed: “…S.I. Newhouse, Jr., could be considered the most powerful man in the publishing business, controlling what Fortune called the greatest concentration of wealth in private hands. He shared responsibility only with his brother Donald, a year younger, who directed the company’s newspapers and cable-television interests, while he concentrated on the magazines…Since Advance Publications, the umbrella covering all the family interests, is owned exclusively by the Newhouse brothers, there are no shareholders (and therefore not even the S.E.C.) to interfere in the administration of a communications empire worth between $8 to $10 billion.”
